I’m in Las Vegas for the 20 Books to 50K indie author convention, the largest of its kind in the world. 1000 indie authirs, and reps from a lit if the big players in the field – Amazon, Reedsy, Bookfunnel and more. I hope to bring back some good information for my indie peeps.

I’m trying to stop screwing around, and get more serious about my branding and marketing efforts, now that I have a new book ready to come out, The Pono Way. (Oh yeah, I have a new book ready to come out. More about that later.)

To that effect, I created some new social media pages for myself, for my author identity. Here they are:

Follow them! And I’ll follow you. Let’s all follow each other’s accounts in a big daisy chain and rip a hole in the space-time continuum!

They say you shouldn’t exhaust yourself posting to every social media platform, but stick to the ones you like and feel comfortable with. I use all of these personally, but for different things. We’ll see which ones work for me as an author. I kind of hate Twitter, but it has a dedicated #WritingCommunity, so you kind of have to be there right now. I’m on Facebook personally all the time, so that will probably stick around. Instagram is image-based — you can’t post without an image — but you can also right surprisingly long captions. And it has a committed #Bookstagram community too, so it’s good to try and hook into that.

Two years from now, this may all have changed, of course. But you can see my current contacts, whatever they may be, on my Contacts page.

Indie Author Day at my library was a success! Ten people attended, just the right amount for our small meeting room. Most of them were indies who had already published a book or two, or were working on one. So we had a very collegial discussion.

Author Rob Cerio presented on “How to Know When Your Manuscript Is Ready” – technically as well as artistically.

“The” Rob Cerio

Romance Author Farrah Rochon spoke about being a “hybrid author,” one who publishes both with a traditional publisher and independently. When the rights to her early novels for Harlequin Romance reverted back to her, she re-published them independently, while continuing to work with other New York publishers.

One thing Farrah said which I found very interesting, is that she feels her trad-published books provide her with discovery — marketing, being in brick and mortar bookstores — but her indie books are where she earns more money these days. That seems like a sound strategy, I wonder how many authors are trying that.

Farrah Rochon

Author Zach Bartlett, who is also one of my librarian coworkers, presented on working with a small press, which is kind of in between indie and trad: you can get into bookstores, get professional book production, but you usually don’t earn an advance, and have to do a lot of marketing yourself.

I also want to thank my workshop partner, Xavier DeSoto, who came by to help me set up for the event, and took the pictures. Thanks, Xavier, that support meant a great deal to me!

We also watched several education videos from the Indie Author day website, on topics like designing a book cover and marketing. They had good information.

There is some other useful stuff on that website, which we didn’t get to, or wasn’t appropriate for the venue. Ingram Spark, the POD publishing arm of the book distributor Ingram, has a podcast about indie publishing, and there are a couple episodes of it there, on Print on Demand publishing, and on using ISBNs (International Standard Book Numbers, the UPC code for a paper book that allows it to be ordered and moved through the various retail systems, including library purchasing.)

There are two videos about leveraging Wattpad for your writing platform, which I found very interesting. Wattpad has always gotten very mixed reviews, but it obviously works for some people. It even has its own publishing imprint now, and a development arm that shops Wattpadder’s stories to Hollywood for film and TV. Are Wattpadders being fairly compensated for that? I don’t know, you would certainly have to do your research.

There is a PDF “Guide to Self Publishing” from Elite Authors, which has some solid information in it, if you can hack your way through the hard, hard sell on the first five or so pages.

You can also see what went on at other libraries across the country on social media by using the hashtag #indieauthorday2019 on Twitter and Instagram.

All in all, my day went very well and I hope to do the same next year. Next year, Indie Author Day is on November 7, and it is being co-marketed with Nanowrimo. So we have to think of some way of combining the two. Maybe a day-long write-in, with breaks for workshops, games, and food.

Attendees, stay in touch. Let’s work together over the course of the year. I hope to see you all next year!

I heard Billy Joel’s song “Only the Good Die Young” on the radio. And I thought, “Man, this is kind of ugly. I don’t think this would fly in today’s climate. Mocking this girl’s religion and pressuring her into sex?”

And yet. It’s just a song. Maybe we have gotten too sensitive these days.

Some of the people in my writer’s workshop, and others, have started a second group to work on marketing our indie books together. We have been meeting to study up on indie marketing and draw up actions plans to publicize our books.

The first thing to do, is to provide a professional presence for your books and yourself as a writer on social media. Facebook, Twitter, whatever you like to use. A website/blog is also a essential. Look for some changes at this blog in the future. For example, I changed the primary domain name from atlantisfallen.net to kirstencorby.com, to reflect the fact that my current work in progress is not the next book in my imagined “Atlantis Fallen” series, but a science fiction novel. The website is currently about all my writing, not just Atlantis Fallen.

The next step is to create a Facebook page: Kirsten Corby, Author. Again, advertising myself, the author, not just Atlantis Fallen, the books. I can always create an Atlantis Fallen Group or Page later, once I finish the next book, which is currently called, The Gift of the Lion .

I’m thinking about Twitter or Instagram. I kind of hate Twitter, but it has a strong #WritingCommunity based around that hashtag — it even has a newsletter. Instagram has a friendlier vibe. But the fact is, I’m already wondering about good, useful content to post on FB and more regularly here. Not sure I can generate worthwhile content for four different platforms.

I’ll update if I add those platforms. But probably, it’s better to concentrate on what I already have, this blog, and my new FB page. Please visit it and tell me what you think: Kirsten Corby, Author.

Oh, there’s also Goodreads — I have a page there — but that’s a whole other thing. We’ll talk about that later.